Happy Birthday Google!

Firstly, we had to rely on Yahoo, AOL and Looksmart, who were leaders in their day, but in no time were superceded by the almighty Google.

We still had to reach for our street maps when we were driving in the car looking for an address or were lost finding a restaurant or bar in any city in the world.

Finding a company on Yahoo and AOL wasn't always easy, as much as we tried. Algorithms back then were to be tried and tested first.

We didn't use the word "Google" when chatting to friends and certainly, "can''t find it, Google it" was not a common phrase.

How times have changed.

If we look back to the day that Larry Page and Sergey Brin filed the corporation Google Inc way back on 4 September 1998, who would have ever guessed, that Google would be one of the most famous companies on the planet?

A play on the mathematical figure "googol" which represents the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes, Google is a brand name that every single person around the world has heard of. As the brand representation aludes to; it embodies an infinite number of web resources and I must say, Google is well and truly on the way to achieving this goal.

As a business, no company can afford to not be found on Google. Small companies, like my own, can be bigger online than offline, just because we got the algorithms right and have played by the Google rules.

Google can make or break your company.

If people cannot find you on Google - you're gone. It is as simple as that.

If it were not for Google, Marketing Eye would be investing millions in advertising and marketing. Instead, we hire a search engine optimization specialist and are placed at number one or two for all of our key search words.

In 1998, average daily searches were 9800. Annually, there were only 3,600,000 searches. Imagine that.

Today is a very different story on a changing landscape. In 2011 it was recorded that there were 1,722,071,000,000 annual number of searches. The average per day was 4,717,000,000. Wow! Seriously, that is one very big figure.

If you have read the book, like I have, you would be able to recall Larry Page's and Sergey Brin's journey to build what is the most powerful company in the world today. It's a journey many of us have been on with them as they have built a company that we can no longer live without.

Will there be another Google? I am not so sure that there will be. Google is an innovative company that has not fallen prey to thinking they are too big to care. They invest more in their employees than any other company and place an emphasis on research and development.

As a business model, graduates from all the top Universities around the globe study Google. It is the benchmark for all businesses to follow.

So, happy birthday Google. It's been a pleasure getting to know you.